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I had a dream last night, Father. I dreamt that Mother was
coming to visit us, but she looked different. Really different.
She was dressed in fire, and when I hugged her, I didn’t burn.
She said she was coming to see you, and that she was going
to give me a new father. Oh, and I had little sisters, too! You
should have seen how they smiled at me! Can Mother even
come back from the gallery?
I woke up, standing in the middle of a hallway choked
with red debris. My father was in my right hand, covered
in steaming blood. My sisters were asleep at my sides,
exhausted. Every muscle in my body burned, and I could
hear the echo of my father’s terrible laughter disappearing
into an inner darkness, where he waited to lay his giant
hands upon the world. On the other side of my senses, the
smell of burning flowers—my mother’s perfume.
As I stood in stunned silence, mentally pushing away
my incipient and desperate curiosity, I watched the pale
hands of moonlight struggle through the gore-sprayed
windows, sifting through the devastation, slightly reddened
by the journey through blood. I could feel the killing-dream
lingering over me. Tom Hush was still alive, and he was
close.
I heard a vehicle start. I ran in the direction of the sound,
toward a barred window. As I dashed across the corpse-
littered floor, I heaped darkness and silence upon that raw
reopened memory, hoping to drown it away, forever. The
sound of my flesh overcoming steel bars and concrete did
well to mute the shouting, caged children who cursed me.
The ruin of the wall was swept up in my wake, following
me out onto the rooftop, three stories above the ground.
The reawakened memory was right behind me, burning and
screaming.
Below, I could see a single pair of headlights piercing
the night. I leapt into the darkness, my father stretched out
before me. Forsaking silence, I roared through my parched
throat, a sound like thunder falling down a mountain. I
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